Yes, I read past the first paragraph. Apparently you did not or maybe you were just scanning it. I can accept that. You probably saw something interesting that fit your agenda and stopped.
As you can see from your first paragraph, the 99% comes from, “social media users”. Apparently they are getting some of their data from this forum.
Here is a quote from later in the article from the actual author….
“While the exact mortality rate of COVID-19 is still not known, a hypothetical rate of 1% would still result in a massive number of deaths if left to spread unchecked.”.
As you can see, they are using a hypothetical rate of 1% to show that even if it was that low, it would still be a serious issue.